Innholdsfortegnelse for 06-05-19 i The Big Issue

STEP 1: If you’re using an iPhone or iPad, go to the App Store. If you’re on an Android device, go to the Google Play app. STEP 2: Search for ‘genARate’ and download the app to your device STEP 3: Open the genARate app, click ‘Start to Scan’ and hold your device’s camera over any page that displays this logo: STEP 4: Once your device’s camera has recognised the page, our exclusive content will appear right before your eyes.…

Cats kill half a million birds a week, ruffling twitchers’ feathers and prompting the Royal Parks conservation officer to call for moggies to be kept inside. So are the claws out for cats? I think we should keep our cats indoors/in secure runs a) to protect wildlife and b) to protect them. Kati Jenkins, Facebook The demise of the bird population is due to the change in farming, hedgerows are no more. Trees cut down to make way for housing and roads. Pollution and other factors. Marie Morgan, Facebook What, no! No animal locked up. Like population control, reduction is the solution. Heather Scholey, Facebook I think the biggest threat to the natural world is man. Victoria Bridger , Facebook My two cats are indoor cats and are perfectly happy.…

A support scheme for formerly homeless young people scooped the gong of the night at the prestigious UK Housing Awards last week. Youth Shedz was dubbed homelessness project of the year (for fewer than 4,000 homes) at the prestigious ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel. The Denbigh initiative was launched in 2017 and was developed by local 16 to 25-year-olds who were involved with a supported housing scheme. Initially the young people were asked to research anti-social behaviour and come up with a solution. Then they worked on transforming a former garage into a hub for them to gain employability skills – learning a wide variety of things ranging from bike repairs to digital literacy. Youth Shedz mentor Scott Jenkinson hailed the top award, saying it was an “incredible achievement”.…

Calling this a cure for arachnophobia is a bit strong. The study worked by dividing up 424 participants into four groups to watch different clips. Two watched scenes from Spider-Man 2 and Ant-Man while the other two control groups watched the Marvel opening common to all their films and a scene featuring nature. It should be said that these excerpts weren’t just the superheroes swinging through the air or punching baddies in the face – they showed the insects they derived their monikers from in action. All four groups were then asked to fill out an online survey assessing the socio-demographic variables and each person’s familiarity with Marvel movies as well as the phobic symptoms they had displayed. While the latter groups showed no significant change, researchers reported a 20…

The Big Issue: How does it feel when a show goes from TV series to national talking point? Jed Mercurio: There is a collective sense of pride Those of us who have been involved in Line of Duty since the beginning are thrilled people are coming to the show and watching it and talking about it. And we were astounded and a bit bemused by the figures we got on Bodyguard. How do you get our heart rates pounding? It is about setting up the stakes. So when the audience is watching the scene, they are aware of the ways real jeopardy can enter it. That makes the audience invested in what is going to happen next. And every now and then we deliver on the jeopardy. The audience can’t…

01 The Foundations of Chinese Medicine by Giovanni Maciocia The textbook on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Written in a clear and easy-to-understand but far-from-simple way, this is the “industry standard” book for the Westerner who is seriously interested in TCM. 02 Organon of Medicine by Samuel Hahnemann It seems to be in vogue to denigrate and belittle homeopathy, and who wouldn’t? Those incredulous gullible fools are being conned into taking a pill that has nothing in it… so say the Twitterati metropolitan chattering liberal elite. If you have an inquisitive mind, and don’t believe MSM, find out for yourself about this system of medicine that has been used for over 200 years. 03 Ayurveda, the Science of Self-Healing by Vasant Lad Ayurveda is the traditional energetic healing system from the…

Wetherspoons has an app that allows customers to skip queuing at the bar to order food and drink. It also means you can play pranks, sending orders of peas or Fruit Shoots to any table of your choice at one of around 900 ’Spoons across the UK. Chris Illman from Fareham formulated Wetherspoons The Game! and founded a page for it on Facebook. The idea is simple: people post a picture of themselves and their table number and wait for fellow group members to send them stuff – anything at all. Last week’s players included Tiffany turning 21 at The Swan in Weymouth, a hen party at The Panniers in Barnstaple and someone celebrating the loss of their virginity, allegedly, at The Manor House in Royston. But among the rowdy…

A hand up, not a handout... Our sellers BUY every copy of the magazine for £1.25 and sell it for £2.50. Trade, not aid… Which is why we ask you to ALWAYS take your copy of the magazine. Our sellers are working and need your custom. Poverty is indiscriminate… That is why we provide ANYONE whose life is blighted by poverty with the opportunity to earn a LEGITIMATE income. The right to citizenship… The Big Issue Foundation, our charitable arm, helps sellers tackle social and financial exclusion. Prevention… Big Issue Invest offers backing and investments to social enterprises, charities and businesses which deliver social value to communities.…

Shame on them. Shame on them all. Last year, Network Rail sold off some of its property portfolio for £1.46bn. This moved it from public ownership to private. When this deal was in the offing it became clear that it would have a profound impact on the work and livelihoods of thousands of people who for years had been tenants of Network Rail. They had taken poor locations, mostly in railway arches, 5,476 arches across Britain, places largely unfancied and unused; they made them sing, grew businesses in them and lives out of them. Mechanics, small shops, latterly micro-breweries. Working people making a living and building communities. Small but vital. The leases they had were relatively cheap, because they weren’t desirable at first. But Network Rail needed to plug a…

The Compassion Experience has stoked controversy since its portrayal of childhood poverty arrived in Birmingham. Installed in a mobile trailer, the interactive exhibit was designed to teach visitors about poverty in developing countries. But there was outcry over the exhibit visiting a city where nearly half of children live in poverty. So we sent Birmingham New Street vendor Andy King to see how the experience compares to his own history. Using immersive audio and video technology, it tells the true stories of two children from Ethiopia and Uganda. Despite the row, Andy, below, felt the experience was worthwhile. He said: “When it comes to the first step of just educating people, poverty in the UK doesn’t have to be in competition with poverty in other countries. Poverty can look different…

Sometimes I just want to tell people how ill-formed I am. Of how I kind of got there in the end, in spite of coming from behind. In this spirit, I recently tried to explain to the editor of this fine publication that I’m very much like French cuisine. The erroneous thing said about me is that I seemed to have been ‘well made’. That is, educated and socialised. But alas, I’m a bit of the leftovers made into a relatively edible stew (if we’re talking food metaphors). Even though I know very little about cuisine and take the French at their word for producing the best food in the world, I’m taking a guess; though I do have a commonality with it, if the history of French dining is…

When I was 16 I was on fire for music, for rock’n’roll. I was in a band with Stephen Stills. I didn’t have a driving licence so my mother would drive us around little shows, little fraternity parties, that kind of thing. I loved the enthusiasm and energy of playing live for people. I had been playing guitar since I was 10 so I had developed some skills by the age of 16 and I had admiration for a lot of the musicians who were playing in that period. We were very poor. My dad was a mechanic, my mother worked in a laundry. But my dad loved music. He would come home after 10 or 12 hours of work, take a shower, then go sit in his big chair…

Westminster politicians are stoking the fires of intergenerational rivalry, and it’s clear the battle is on. Last week Tory MP Damian Green, one of Theresa May’s key allies, argued that the over-50s should be taxed an extra £300 a year to fund the UK’s struggling social care sector. Days before, a group of peers said benefits like the winter fuel allowance and free TV licences for everyone over 75 should be scrapped. They’re calling it ‘intergenerational fairness’, pushing the idea that while pensioner poverty once justified age-based benefits, the older generations just aren’t poor enough any more. They think cash should be invested in young people instead. The spending power of retired people now far outweighs that of workers in their twenties and thirties and so, they say, it’s fair…

Brixton is London’s oldest prison and this year marks its bi-centenary. Over its 200 years, it has held hundreds of thousands of people and while all of them have different stories to tell, most are connected by poverty, disadvantage and the feeling of being cast out. Throughout its existence, the jail has long been at the heart of the prison debate, as pioneering as it has been ruthless. Those sent to Brixton immediately after it was built in 1819 were truly destitute. London had swelled to become the first city in the Western world to reach the million mark and many of its inhabitants were migrants from the countryside, looking for a better life in the city. Instead, they found themselves living in the dirt and squalor of slums and…

The official death toll from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, perhaps the biggest environmental catastrophe in modern history, is 31. The actual number may be closer to one million. The machinations that led to such an absurdly low official count, with as much effort spent preventing political as well as nuclear fallout, are brought to vivid life in a new HBO/Sky Atlantic co-production. The key issues – trust in our politicians, the brutal treatment of whistleblowers and humanity destroying the natural world – could scarcely be more current. Jared Harris plays Valery Legasov, the chief of the commission investigating the disaster and attempting to speaking truth to powerful politicos including then-leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Having previously starred as advertising executive Lane Pryce in Mad Men and King George VI in The…

Since becoming a BBC Young Musician of the Year finalist in 2016, saxophonist Jess Gillam has been in constant demand, performing at last year’s Last Night of the Proms and recently launching her own Radio 3 programme This Classical Life. Rise is her debut album (out now on Decca), and it features a mix of genres – from her signature piece Pequeña Czarda by Pedro Iturralde (arranged by her mentor John Harle) to covers of Kate Bush and David Bowie pieces, each imbued with Gillam’s distinctive, characterful style.…

01 Why we like living in Oklahoma City The people Mark: People are easy to approach in Oklahoma. There’s a general friendliness that’s hard to find in other places. Also Bricktown, the basketball team, the weather. Rene: People aren’t stuck up and snobby. It’s a big city but it feels like a close-knit community. I love Christmas and fall with the lights and giant ornaments downtown. 02 Our favourite area of Oklahoma The Plaza District Mark: You’re going to find a great mix of shopping, art and dining in the Plaza District. Ten years ago you would barely recognise the area, but it’s come a really long way. We feel especially close to the Plaza District because we work alongside DNA Galleries, a local gallery and gift store, on our…

Sabrina’s an inspiration Thank you for the interview with Sabrina Cohen-Hatton [April 15-21] who was homeless at 15. She truly is inspirational! I was homeless at 16, in 1976, and like Sabrina, no one was really concerned or cared about me. I had no emotional or financial support. My mum (who had just lost her husband) was put in a hostel as we lost our flat above the restaurant my dad worked in. My two brothers were placed in a kids’ home. I’m now 58 and still relive the awful trauma. There were no mental health services, no duty of care, no safeguarding. This year I got diagnosed with PTSD. Like Sabrina, I too ate out of dustbins. I would make a cup of tea last two hours in a…

In the book The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity, Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott lay out the framework for a modern society fit for people regularly reaching their 100th birthdays. The academics move away from the linear education-work-retirement approach to life and instead encourage regular changes in direction. Periods of earning will be interspersed with learning or training, and the book mostly focuses on how this could work. But the finances look tricky even through the authors’ pragmatic and optimistic lens – the retirement age must continue to shift, they say, because saving for a three-decade retirement would be unachievable. The book concludes we’ll need to maintain a pattern of further education, traditional work, mixed part-time roles and entrepreneurship until we are well into our…

When you read a lot of fiction you tend to come across the same stories again and again, so when something highly original arrives on the desk it’s a shot of adrenaline to the brain. This week’s books are both fantastic pieces of storytelling that are indefinable but utterly compelling. First up we have the thrillingly evocative Nina X by Ewan Morrison. This is Morrison’s first novel in seven years, but it’s been worth the wait. The story is told through the journals of Nina, a young woman recently rescued from a bizarre communist cult based in a London house. The story switches between Nina’s journals post-release and her earlier diaries as a young girl inside the cult from 16 years previously. What quickly transpires is that Nina was born…

When we first meet Mads Mikkelsen in the life-or-death drama Arctic he’s got chills and unfortunately they are multiplying. As the lone survivor of a plane crash in a vast snowfield, he is sleepwalking through a Groundhog Day groove of survival. Swaddled in all-weather outerwear – the nametag on his grubby red parka identifies him as “Overgard” – the shivering Dane cycles robotically through a daily routine tending the rickety camp he has bodged together around the downed aircraft’s fuselage. Prodded by a schedule of alarms on his watch, he grimly chisels out a gigantic SOS sign in the snow despite the fact the sky remains resolutely empty. Then he checks his ad hoc ice-fishing holes in hope of finding a trout. Then he heaves a chunky GPS transponder up…

I am currently travelling the world interrupting Professor Brian Cox during his cosmology lectures, so I found myself out of signal range from BBC Radio Four and turned to National Public Radio and its podcasts. The future has been catastrophic and diabolical since human beings first began to imagine it. The end of the world is frequently nigh. With the rose tint of nostalgia, it is easy to consider your existence to be during the worst of times, NPR’s Throughline aims to “go back in time to understand the present”. In the most recent episode, Resistance is Futile, hosts Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah look at our fears of destruction by malevolent artificial intelligence via our previous paranoias about coffee, tractors and equal opportunity in the workspace. Coffee was considered…